Humbugs and Heartstrings

by Catherine Ferguson

  And then I exhale slowly.

  Of course.

  It’s the home movie DVD.

  I collapse back onto the sofa, weak with relief. Gee thanks, Fez, for giving me the fright of my life twice in one night!

  On the TV screen, Carol is laughing into the camera. ‘You’ve got a message! You’ve got a message!’ She’s in a bar, surrounded by faces I know from my London days, and she’s waving my old mobile phone about. I lean closer to the screen. Her blonde hair was longer then, swinging on her shoulders. She looks relaxed and carefree. And so young.

  ‘It might be Bob!’ she sings teasingly to the person operating the camcorder, who, presumably, is me.

  There are butterflies in my stomach but I can’t tear my eyes away.

  I remember the occasion as if it were yesterday. It was a Christmas night out four years ago and for some reason, I’d decided to be the mildly irritating person who records the occasion by pointing a piece of technology in her friends’ faces all night.

  Dark-haired Roz, with her exotic Dita Von Teese looks, is loving it, posing and pouting like a B-list celebrity, really playing up to the camera. She nudges Carol out of the way then leans towards me for a sultry close-up, prompting shrieks of laughter from around the table.

  God, they’re all there.

  I peer closer.

  Sally, Nicola and Emma, who shared the flat below Carol and me, sit along a banquette, giggly and glammed up in party dresses with red tinsel in their hair. They raise their cocktails to the camera and begin wailing a flat and drunkenly shambolic rendition of ‘White Christmas’.

  Then the camera swings to Carol, in a skinny green strapless dress. She’s trying to access my message.

  ‘No! Give it here!’

  I start at the sound of my own voice.

  Suddenly, a blank grey wall fills the screen as the camcorder is hastily put down.

  Then one of the girls – Nicola, I think – shouts, ‘Come on, Bobbie, what does he say?’ and the camera wobbles around before settling on me.

  Seeing how I looked then makes me catch my breath. My hair is much shorter – sleek and shoulder-length – and I’m wearing a pretty, beaded shift dress in deep turquoise.

  I could be looking at a stranger.

  ‘Get lost, Nic,’ squeals the person who used to be me, holding up her hands to shield her face.

  ‘Does he want a second date, then?’ she persists. ‘Is he coming back for more?’

  Then Carol leans in and shouts at the camera, ‘He’d bloody better be back, or he’ll have me to answer to. Nobody disrespects my best friend!’

  And I’m laughing and saying, ‘Oh God, poor Bob. He doesn’t know what he’s let himself in for!’

  Carol raises her cocktail. ‘To Bob, who hasn’t the bloody foggiest, bless him.’

  I clink her glass and we lean together, smiling broadly at the camera. Two best friends – one small, dark and curvy, the other blonde and reed slim – enjoying a Saturday night out with the girls. Apparently without a care in the world.

  I grab the remote and hit the pause button. Then I sit there for goodness knows how long, studying those two faces.

  Deeply immersed in memories, I’m suddenly aware the flat buzzer has sounded at least twice.

  I stare towards the door, still dazed.

  Is it Fez, back again already? Quickly I scan the room to see if he’s left anything behind by mistake.

  Then I rush through to the intercom in the hallway.

  ‘Hi!’ barks a voice. ‘Open up. We’ve got an emergency.’

  It’s Carol.

  That probably means I’ll be cleaning tomorrow, I think, as I open the door and wait for her to run up the stairs.

  ‘Hope I haven’t interrupted anything I shouldn’t.’ She runs her eyes over my outfit and hands me a bag with a uniform in it. Then she barges through to the living room without even asking if she should take off her shoes, shouting, ‘So this is Bobbie Central. Very – er – cosy.’

  ‘Don’t mind me,’ I mutter, following her through.

  Never mind cosy. What she really means is it’s tiny. And of course it is, especially when you compare it to her vast, cheerless mausoleum of a penthouse apartment.

  Anyway, I was right. Apparently Rona and Violet, two of our regular cleaners, both phoned in sick and we’re a man down – so, yes, tomorrow I will be scrubbing toilets and dredging strangers’ hairs from plugholes, despite the fact it’s not in my job description.

  ‘What’s this?’ She snatches up the remote and fumbles for the rewind button.

  ‘Oh, nothing.’ I feel quite faint as I watch our past zipping backwards at high speed. ‘Fez brought it round.’

  ‘Well, it’s obviously not nothing,’ she says belligerently, plonking herself down in the middle of the sofa.

  I watch from the door as she glues herself to the screen, as transfixed as I was a few minutes earlier.

  Suddenly I’m gripped by the strangest sensation.

  I am soaring through the air, high up in the clouds, looking down on the top of Carol’s head as if I’ve given my body the slip. Moving forward, I grasp the back of the sofa.

  It’s only Carol’s second visit here. The first occasion was when I moved in two years ago and she dropped off a box of my old stuff from the London place. That time, she didn’t even bother to cross the threshold.

  We reach the part in the footage where we clink glasses and smile into the lens.

  Then more people arrive, including Beau, Carol’s boyfriend at the time. He balances his big, rugby player body on the arm of her chair, takes her face in his hands and kisses her as if there’s no one else around. Roz shouts, ‘Get a room!’ and everyone laughs and whistles, and Beau says, ‘Hey, it’s not easy dating a workaholic. I’m just pinning her down while I get the chance.’

  I look at the back of Carol’s sleek blonde head. What’s it like for her to see him after so long? And whatever happened to Beau after she ditched him?

  Then suddenly, the video leaps to another scene and we’re sitting round the kitchen table in Carol’s London flat; me, Carol, Roz and Sally. There are boxes everywhere – on the floor, stacked by the door and on the table beside the empty mugs and a half-eaten packet of cookies.

  Painful feelings rush back.

  It’s the day I left London.

  Everything had turned sour. I couldn’t afford to stay. So I packed one day and left the next.

  It was so rushed that apart from Carol, only Sally and Roz were around to see me off.

  Sally must have picked up the camcorder from one of the boxes. ‘I can’t believe you’re going, Bobbie!’ she’s saying. ‘It’s the end of an era.’

  The picture wobbles a bit then Roz, queen of melodrama, starts imploring me to stay. ‘We’ll look after you,’ she keeps saying. ‘We will. Won’t we, Carol?’

  I’m smiling at them in turn. But it’s a stiff, artificial smile. The sort that eventually makes the muscles in your jaw begin to ache.

  I can remember it so well. My heart was breaking but I was determined not to show it.

  I was thinking, If I can get out of here now, with my eyes still dry, I can show Carol I couldn’t care less that she’s just sitting there, detached and silent, ignoring me and refusing to join in with the girls’ pleas for me to stay.

  I watch her now as she leans towards the screen. What is she thinking as she observes herself, all stiff-backed and stony-faced, on that awful day three years ago? Does she regret the coldness of her send-off? Probably not, otherwise relations between us would surely have thawed during the intervening time.

  Why couldn’t she understand that, in the end, I had to step off that terrifying rollercoaster ride? Throw in the towel and retreat back up North.

  Trading the stock markets was the most exhilarating experience I’d ever had.

  When it was going our way.

  Chapter Six

  I step into the shower next morning, knowing it might make me late for my
cleaning job. But after a bad night’s sleep, during which I tossed and turned, waking up in a sweaty panic because something black and menacing was panting after me, I need the therapy of hot, soothing suds on my back to restore my equilibrium.

  But the water is stone cold.

  With a sinking feeling, I remember the boiler. The landlord didn’t even bother to call back last night, which is nothing new.

  My shower lasts about ten seconds but at least I’ll be at work on time. I race around getting dressed, thinking about last night, which now seems like a weird dream.

  When the video footage clicked off, neither of us moved. Carol kept watching the empty screen while I stared at the back of her head.

  I broke the silence by saying, ‘Phew! I don’t know about you, but after that blast from the past, I need a drink.’ I headed for the kitchen, calling back, ‘Would you like a glass of wine?’

  I hoped she would stay and we could talk. But as I poured two glasses of rosé from the fridge, she shouted something in reply and then I heard the front door open and bang shut.

  When I went back in, she’d gone.

  I’ve known Carol since we met on the first day at primary school.

  She is strong, confident and clever; one of life’s initiators.

  And she always has to be in charge.

  For a shy child like me, that first day was scary.

  When thin, grey-haired Mrs Weavering told us to change for PE, I took off my socks and put the brand new things that Mum called ‘sandshoes’ on my bare feet. They had a funny smell that made me think of the inside of our car.

  It was only when one of my new classmates called out, ‘Mrs Weavering, that girl’s taken off her socks!’ and the whole room turned to look where she was pointing, that I realised I had got it wrong. Everyone else had known they should keep their socks on.

  I can still remember the mocking laughter in that cavernous gym hall setting my cheeks on fire, and the way that Carol McGinley, squashed beside me on the long balance bench, came to my rescue. She leaned into me and grinned. Then she stood up and announced to the class and Mrs Weavering that she, too, was going to take her socks off because she liked bare feet. I remember the defiant look she gave the rest of the class. And I remember feeling proud – and a little relieved – to have Carol McGinley on my side.

  After that, she was always in my corner.

  Until she wasn’t …

  At playtime, Carol told me her mum and dad were rich and that I could come for tea if I liked. And when I saw where she lived, I realised they must be very rich indeed, because it was an enormous house with the most incredible garden I had ever seen in my life. It had a wood and a tree-house and even a mini lake.

  Until I saw where Carol lived, I don’t think it had ever occurred to me that some people have money and some people don’t.

  I wondered what Carol would think when she saw number four Worcester Way, the little house where I lived with my mum and dad. As it turned out, she thought I was really lucky to have a slide in my back garden and a mum who was always there and baked such yummy cakes. (The childminder collected Carol from school because her parents were always at work.)

  I think it was comparing how we lived to the McGinleys’ lifestyle that first brought out the entrepreneur in me.

  When other ten-year-olds were dreaming of dates with Simon Le Bon or Jason Orange, I’d spend hours thinking up money-making schemes and imagining how pleased Mum and Dad would be when we were as rich as Carol. Once I bought a giant bag of sweets with my pocket money, split them up into smaller bags and sold them to kids in the playground for a few pence, ending up with a satisfying profit that I carefully saved in my piggy bank. It was all done out of sight of the teachers, of course – and my parents, who would have been mortified if they’d known what I was up to.

  Then there was the cake-baking during the school holidays. Mum was fine about this because she reckoned it kept me usefully occupied when I could have been wailing for cinema visits and shopping trips and declaring myself terminally bored.

  I would set up a little stall at the entrance to our cul-de-sac and sell my iced fairy cakes to passers-by, mostly neighbours and friends of my parents, who presumably thought me cute.

  Carol hated my money-raising schemes. Mainly because I’d get so involved, I had no time to hang around with her and trail the boy she happened to be mad on at the time. All my waking hours would be taken up shopping, baking, working out my profit margins and entering my version of accounts into a little lined notebook.

  I remember one Saturday afternoon when we were about twelve she wanted me to go into town and meet a boy she’d fancied for ages and his friend on a sort of ‘double date’. She was livid when I refused.

  ‘All you care about is your fucking cake stall!’ she screeched and ran off in tears.

  I’d never seen her so mad. She was usually as laid-back as they come.

  But she didn’t understand. Why would she?

  She never got teased for not wearing the ‘right’ trainers. Her mother didn’t worry herself half to death each month as rent day drew near.

  Hanging around with boys just didn’t interest me. I was far more focused on trying to raise our family’s fortunes. Once, I saved up for ages and bought Mum a handbag made from real leather for her birthday. She cried and declared it far too beautiful to take round the shops, and it sat on her bedside table for weeks before she gave it an airing.

  But Carol and I stuck together through school, a well-known comic double act: Carol ‘Plank’ McGinley and Bobbie ‘Fat Bum’ Cartwright. We remained the best of friends even when college sent us in different directions – she to study business in London (after her father threatened to cut her off without a penny if she went to drama college) and me to pursue my passion for sculpture and crafts at an art college in the South.

  I moved to London after graduation and Carol persuaded me to flat-share. Her father had bought the place as an investment and Carol lived there for free. But the McGinleys had instilled thrifty ways in their children from an early age so I still paid rent. Carol carefully shaved five per cent off the going rate, although in trendy Notting Hill, it was still a long way off cheap.

  And then, soon after, I met Bob.

  Life was exciting, filled with thrilling possibilities, the way it is in your twenties.

  But then my plans to start up an online shop, selling – among other things – my own glass vases and Christmas baubles, faltered almost from the word go. It took a long time to start up a proper business. But I needed money immediately, to pay the rent.

  Before too long, I was up to my eyes in debt trying to maintain my London lifestyle on a waitress’s wages.

  I was on the point of throwing in the towel and moving back up North when Carol came back from a drink with a friend, eyes shining. She’d heard of an amazing way to make money. Her friend, she said, was studying a way of analysing the financial markets in order to predict turns. She showed me the book she’d borrowed and talked excitedly about things called Fibonacci numbers, Elliott Waves and the Golden Ratio, and she made it sound like a science, instead of the gambling I at first assumed it was.

  I was still doubtful.

  But as I had a pile of bills that was growing by the week, I decided it wouldn’t do any harm to find out more. Carol’s friend certainly seemed to be having amazing results. She’d only been doing it three months, but she’d already given up a good job as a marketing executive in order to be a full-time trader.

  So I studied the books with Carol, we bought the software and started the most adrenaline-pumped journey of our lives.

  Watching the movements of the markets was so compelling, we’d often still be there, behind our computer screens at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, long after midnight, surrounded by coffee mugs and the remains of sandwiches snatched on the go. The rush when we were right and managed to predict a turn was like nothing I’d ever experienced.

  Once, I went to Mum’s for
a long weekend and arrived back on Monday to find that I was eighteen thousand pounds richer.

  We had a big party that night.

  But the trick was not just spotting when to get in with a trade. You also had to know when to get out. Because if you hung on too long as the markets climbed or fell your way, a swift turn could take you by surprise and those values could go tumbling in the opposite direction, eating up all your hard-won profit and more besides.

  It was exciting, at times rewarding and at other times, excruciatingly nail-biting.

  And it always felt vaguely shaming to me.

  However much I dressed it up in fancy, technical terms, it was gambling, pure and simple.

  And as several friends who knew me well pointed out, it was also a very long way from my original career plans.

  But we had a golden six months and made a fair bit of money. This was all wonderfully new to me. For once I didn’t have to worry about bills or weigh up carefully whether I could afford a new mascara. And at last I could treat Mum and Tim to the little luxuries they’d never had.

  But then things began to change. I think we started taking more risks. We’d ride a trend longer than we used to, in the hope that it would turn out to be ‘the big one’ that traders dream of – the one that clears the mortgage.

  Big success was always just one more trade away.

  Our profits started to decline and then it became a vicious circle. Because we were losing money, we’d heap on bigger stakes in a desperate attempt to offset our losses.

  After one last terrifying gamble, I was left with absolutely nothing. Not even the train fare back home. Mum had to buy the ticket for me.

  It was a rollercoaster ride that left me devastated – financially, physically and emotionally.

  And at a time when I needed Carol’s friendship more than ever, she was no longer there for me.

  When I told her I had no option but to leave London and move in with Mum and Tim, and that I was all packed and ready to go, she just stared at me and walked out of the room. She wouldn’t talk about it. She just shut me out.

  She was acting like I was deliberately deserting her. But what choice did I have? I had no rich Daddy to pick up the pieces, buy me an apartment and set me up in business!